The Almanian Uprising, also known as the Almania Crisis, of 17 ABY was a local conflict engineered by the Dark Jedi and former Jedi Academy student Kueller, who was attempting to bring down the New Republic, and with it, the revived Jedi Order. The conflict was defined by a series of bombings across the New Republic and a pitched space battle above Almania, the protagonists of whom the Galactic Empire dubbed as the New Rebellion.
Almania itself was a little known Wild Space world located not too far from the Corporate Sector. A backwater known to few, the planet was orbited by the moons of wealthy Pydyr, Auyemesh and Drewwa. The planet was relatively ignored by the Empire and Rebel Alliance-sympathetic, Auyemesh and Pydyr the only real intergalactic ports of call in the system. This easily allowed the rise of the Je'har, who became the tyrannical upper caste of the planet, and unfortunately the planet was also keenly raided by slavers.
Dolph was a very young Almanian man when he was discovered to have an affinity to the Force. One of the first of Luke Skywalker's Yavin 4 Jedi Academy students, Dolph was enlisted for less than a year when he was informed that his parents had been killed by the Je'har. Enraged, and with few friends despite Brakiss, Dolph took off for his homeworld to identify the corpses. He never returned to Yavin 4.
He arrived on Almania to see his parents both impaled in front of the Je'har palace. Overwhelmed with disgust and hatred he fell into the whirlpool of the dark side, vowing to bring down the Je'har regime. Despite his lack of training in the dark arts, he knew enough to focus his anger and became a dangerous savage. He organized his homeworld into a resistance movement and hid himself behind a new identity: Kueller, the name of a long dead Almanian general. As part of his mystique, he always wore a Hendanyn death mask, which made him rather reminiscent of Darth Vader.
His forces fell in easily behind him, and his army destroyed the Je'har completely, torching all sympathizers of the Je'har. Seeing himself as a visionary, and misguided by the dark side—similar to Anakin Skywalker's fall into the abyss—he turned his sights on the New Republic, thinking he could prevent mass murder on the scale of the Je'har. He got in contact with his friend, the Imperial mole in Skywalker's academy, Brakiss, who Skywalker had scared off by guiding Brakiss to look inside himself. Brakiss, a young blonde man of rich blood, had taken control of a vast droid-building facility on Telti.
The bombing of the Senate Hall.
Leia Organa Solo, Chief of State of the New Republic and President of the Senate, had been under intense pressure from the Black Fleet Crisis political situation. Organa Solo, however, was determined to put it behind her. Her new term of the Senate was full of ex-Imperial Senators and ex-Imperial worlds, such as the Senator for Exodeen. Despite reassurance from Mon Mothma, she was unsure of the situation. Halfway across the galaxy, her brother, Luke Skywalker, felt an odd feeling resonating from Coruscant and feeling a tragic disturbance in the Force. Concerned, he took off from Yavin 4 for Coruscant as soon as he could.
Han Solo, meanwhile, was busy taking a request from a former smuggler friend Jarril, who requested that he check out a big disturbance on the Smuggler's Run. Jarril noticed that many smugglers had been suddenly getting rocketing rich—and then passing away. The two smugglers got separated after a massive explosion rocked the Coruscant skyline.
As Organa Solo took the podium and started into an inspired speech, powerful bombs rocked the Imperial Palace Senate chamber. Leia was knocked off her feet, over a hundred Senators were dead or wounded and Leia herself had lost her hearing. Just prior, at calm and settled Pydyr, 1,651,305 natives died in an instant - almost the entire population, and the factor that brought about the prior disturbance in the Force. Han immediately headed to Leia's side, finding that many of Leia's supporters had been killed in the blasts. The Senate Hall was ruined, and Jarril had apparently gone missing.
Kueller, protagonist of the Uprising at Almania.
Luke arrived at Coruscant and immediately sensed that Brakiss was somehow behind the incident and started to investigate. Han, reassured that his wife was safe and well, sought to talk to Jarril and found that he had vanished off the face of the galaxy. He decided the best place to search for him would be at the Smuggler's Run. Near Kessel, the site of Lando Calrissian's current business, Lando ran into Jarril's ship, the Spicy Lady, drifting in space. In Jarril's ship, modeled incidentally after his former ship the Millennium Falcon, he discovered the message: "Cargo delivered. Fireworks spectacular. Solo knows. We can count on his involvement." and Jarril's dead body. Troubled, he found Han through smuggler Talon Karrde, and uncertainly headed back to the Smuggler's Run, hoping not to run into Nandreeson—a powerful pirate with a grudge against Lando.
Meanwhile, C-3PO and R2-D2 accidentally began their own investigation into the incident, with them finding Luke's X-wing had been disassembled and re-assembled by Kloperian mechanics—and the X-Wing had a bomb inside it's computer. Tatooine mechanic Cole Fardreamer, who dreamt of meeting Luke Skywalker, discovered bombs in other starfighters. When the Kloperian's discovered him however, they opened fire on R2-D2.
The political situation of Coruscant worsened. The Senate had somehow learned of Jarril's message and promptly blamed Han for the bombing, placing Leia under yet more pressure. Luke had tracked Brakiss to a droid factory on Telti, where his former student was easily defeated by Skywalker in a short lightsaber duel. Brakiss pleaded for him to go to Almania, then weakly attempted to get him to turn back to his Yavin Academy. Luke headed off for Almania, and as he attempted to land, the bomb in his ship's supposedly safe central computer exploded, causing Skywalker to crash-land. At the capital, a message from Kueller to the Chief of State demanded that Organa Solo hand over the reigns of the Republic to him—or he would kill her family. As the message ended, Kueller wiped out the entire population of Auyemesh. In total disgust, Leia resigned from her post, placing Mon Mothma as caretaker and took off quietly for Almania, aided by a small fleet commanded by General Antilles.
Han and Lando's investigation on the Run was foiled, with Nandreeson capturing the two and planting suspicions that he knew what was going on. The situation was grim for the Heroes of Yavin.
Kueller and his "apprentice," Brakiss.
Wedge Antilles' fleet, including three MC90 Star Cruisers—Tatooine, Yavin and Calamari–and twenty smaller ships, including Leia's personal transport Alderaan, arrived in the system before the Senate could realize what the Chief of State had done. In opposition, three of Kueller's Victory-class Star Destroyer's emerged from hyperspace and the two forces engaged in a fierce battle. Leia set off immediately to find her brother, as Cole Fardreamer headed for Telti to investigate the droids. Han and Lando successfully dealt with Nandreeson—until most of the droids on the Smuggler's Run exploded. These droids had incidentally been Jarril's business—stealing droids from Coruscant. Han hauled the injured off the Run, and met up with Talon Karrde. The smugglers decided to head for Almania.
The injured Luke finally met Kueller in battle, who was more than a match for the injured Master. Skywalker was captured, but with the aid of a Pydyrian healing stick and a native thernbee he managed to escape and meet up with his sister. Leia insisted that they leave, but Luke stopped, to face Kueller, with Kueller attempting to persuade Luke to turn to the dark side. Luke decided the only thing he can do is give up and let Kueller kill him, allowing his spirit to help Leia. But the timely arrival of Han, Mara and some Ysalamiri weakened Kueller. Enraged, Kueller threatened to destroy the Republic with the flick of his fingers, but as he activated the bombing droids, Artoo Detoo managed to disable the bombs from the base on Telti, despite a meeting with a security force made up of droids called the "Red Terror." As Kueller sinisterly waited for the disturbance in the force, Leia, not caring if her actions were of the dark side, shot Kueller dead from behind. As she knelt down next to his body and pulled off his mask, she realized who she had killed—it was just a boy.
Wedge Antilles had already craftily destroyed the enemy flotilla—the fleet had been manned wholly by droids. Antilles and his co-commander General Ceousa had manipulated the droid weaknesses, destroying them doing so. The task force and the Skywalker-Solo family returned to Coruscant as heroes.
Kueller and Brakiss.
The second vote of no confidence against the Chief of State's leadership was a total failure, the new Senators rallying around Leia Organa Solo. However continued pressure and the Black Fleet and Almanian political crisis' had put her under far too much pressure. The Corellian Insurrection's political impact would also contribute to her stepping down from the Presidency for an indefinite period. The Senate would reconvene in temporary chambers until the Grand Convocation Chamber could be reconstructed.
Luke Skywalker successfully lobbied for emergency relief teams to be sent to the Almanian system to protect the Thernbees and survivors of the bombings. His former apprentice, Brakiss, disappeared off the face of Telti, but would later resurface to cause trouble with the Second Imperium.
On the Imperial front, Admiral Gilad Pellaeon and Admiral Natasi Daala, thinking the New Republic wouldn't have the backbone to fight the Empire off, launched a string of attacks in the wake of the Uprising at Almania. They were sorely mistaken. The Imperial Remnant was left in tatters in both the Deep Core and Outer Rim Territories— there was no way for them to recover. They were now an overlooked backwater.
Positively, the Fallanassi, who rose to prominence in the previous Black Fleet Crisis, would settle on Pydyr following the resolution of the crisis.
- The Essential Chronology
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- The Official Star Wars Fact File93
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